Topical Tropes

These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.

The tenth anniversary judgment day show was supposed to be the biggest in their history and at the time was seen as the moment FMW had transitioned from indie fed to national phenomenon. In hindsight, people point argue that it showed all the early warning signs of what lead to the FMW's decline and closure. Despite Kodo Fuyuki's defeat, the "sports entertainment" he introduced never really went away(the brass knuckles title didn't come back while the WEW belt stayed), the variety of match types on the card decreased(nothing for different weight divisions), the women's division started to disappear(the baby faces were in a handicap match simply because there were only two left) and the booking became increasingly questionable(highlighted by the main event).

H was a little sloppier than usual during his match with Mr. Gannosuke on Judgment Day, where Shawn Michaels proclaimed talent like them would be the reason FMW would become the #1 company in Japan. H's paralysis after a botched moonsault would end up being what many considered the final nail in FMW's coffin.

Nigel McGuinness would be happy to see that even in the promotion for which garbage wrestling was named, W*ING Kanemura had the sense to get his damned hands up!

The whole campaign against the mainstream. It was already kind of questionable in the 1990s when FMW was drawing crowds of 11,000 but in the 2010s, the industry had declined so much that such numbers would have people calling you "mainstream" by default.

It's the Same, Now It Sucks: One of the main complaints about the "sports entertainment" era. Not every FMW fan actually liked excessive garbage wrestling but those that did not found the promotion put on so many different match types that they could still get their money's worth while ignoring the blood baths. WEW coincided with things becoming more uniform and samey.

Memetic Mutation: Oh my God! Those Japanese tables! They're so hard, they don't break! (W*ING Kanemura did a leg drop from ten feet off a scaffold, snapping one of the table's metal legs but still not going through it)

Older Than They Think: IWA Japan's King Of The Death Match tournament is cited as an example of "Follow The Leader" and at least in name, it deserves to be. But it's also full circle, IWA Japan being spun off from IWA Puerto Rico, which in turn was started at least in part by as well as built itself up on wrestlers who defected from WWC, where FMW got many of its ideas from in the first place.

Stuck in Their Shadow: Tarzan Goto always drew poorly when Atsushi Onita was not around to tag or feud with. "Shin" FMW was his attempt to try and overcome this, to become a top draw.

They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Megumi Kudo-Shark Tsuchiya match listed on the main page under Gory Deadly Overkill Title of Fatal Death was Kudo's retirement match, meaning she retired as Champion, violating wrestling tradition which says you are supposed to lose your last match. This was just short of a year after Kudo had defeated Combat Toyoda for the title in Toyoda's retirement match (although Toyoda came back two years later, though in AJW, not FMW). They could have used Kudo to make a new star for the division by having that other wrestler defeat Kudo clean in Kudo's last match. It also ended up being pointless since Kudo vacated the titles in her retirement ceremony on June 13th, and Shark defeated Aja Kong for them on September 28th and never lost them, as they apparently became inactive at some undetermined point later that year. Thus, they made a big huge deal about Kudo having her last match and retiring as Champion...only to end up right back where they started five months later, much like how Lita regained the belt by defeating Mickie James after Trish Stratus had vacated it after winning it in her "retirement" match. The BIG difference is that, well, Trish didn't have to survive a "No Rope 200 Volt double hell Double Barbed Wire Barricade Double Landmine Crushed Glass Electrical Barbed Wire Death Match" against a selfish no-selling monster. That, and, unlike Toyoda OR Trish, Kudo never came back.

Values Dissonance: It should be noted that the "Sports Entertainment" that nearly destroyed FMW still had a much stronger focus on ring action and was still more violent than the pro wrestling product in the United States described by those same two words. The FMW faithful are free to dislike it but should count their blessings Fuyuki didn't regress things nearly as far as he could have.

Vindicated by History: After being shunned and dismissed by the Japanese wrestling mainstream for a decade, Onita got to bring his style of match to New Japan Pro Wrestling. At NJPW Strong Style Symphony- New Japan Spirit 1999, April 10, 1999, on live national TV, he got to open the show in a No Rope Explosive Barbed Wire Death Match against Masahiro Chono, which went to a double-knockout. At NJPW Jingu Climax, August 28th, 1999, again on live national TV, in his "The Great Nita" gimmick, he main evented against the Great Muta in a No Rope Explosive Barbed Wire Barricade Explosive Land Mine Death Match, which Onita lost. At NJPW Riki Choshu Revival, July 30, 2000 on PPV, Choshu d. Onita in a No Rope Explosive Barbed Wire Death Match. While it may not seem like vindication for Onita to have been able to bring these matches to New Japan since he didn't win any of them, just consider how this was very different for New Japan. It's comparable to having Terry Funk or Sabu in a barbed-wire match main eventing on Raw against The Rock or Stone Cold Steve Austin.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy